The Creationists rejoiced: the theory of Evolution was dead. Buried in sediments seventy million years deep--the time of the dinosaurs--the unmistakable fossil of a human being. Studied, tested, corroborated, error-corrected, it was confirmed by fifty-four renowned academic institutions and counting. The finding was not disputed.
Evolution was wrong: God was real. Dinosaur and man had co-existed after all and Science was defeated by its own incorruptible Method.
Governments fell, revolutions struck, Western Secularism collapsed.
Only one colony of scientists remained, living in exile off the coast of Japan. With the world gone mad they continued their way of life as if the fossil had never existed, working tirelessly to explain it. They became to society as pagans are to us. Considered mad but harmless they were left to their own devices, forgotten, for over a century.
Then one day the scientists celebrated a breakthrough in the pursuit of the only thing they knew could disprove the human fossil. Using all their remaining funds, they built the time machine. The time-traveler went seventy million years backward in search of humans. He found dinosaurs the size of houses, roaming the jungles and hunting the plains. He saw massive insects and the oxygen in the air made him feel truly alive. All the things he dreamed of as a boy, he saw everything. And in all his searching he found no men.
Vindicated, he returned to his time machine, already preparing the report in his mind. At last Science could return to its rightful throne. But when he reached the machine it had been crushed beneath the foot of some giant ruminant. He was marooned, out of time, alone, with no way of getting back. And then his awful mistake suddenly dawned.
"Oh," he said.
The End